In the winter of 1939, a few months after war was declared in Europe, the Scheme for Recording the Changing Face of Britain (known since as Recording Britain) was established by Kenneth Clark, the author, museum director and broadcaster. Artists, he decreed, would be commissioned to create drawings

Many small regional museums are struggling. For lack of resources, items from their collections are often locked away, unseen by all but the most adventurous researcher. This is where Two Temple Place comes in. Designed in the 1890s by John Loughborough Pearson for the first Viscount Astor (the

In 1999 the photographer Annie Leibovitz published the first iteration of what would prove to be a hugely popular project. For Women, a collaboration with her partner, Susan Sontag, the idea was that the subjects would have nothing in common other than that they were women. They ranged from female

Almost a year ago, the ceramicist Clare Twomey spent from 7am until 7pm walking up and down Westminster Bridge in London, handing out cards to bemused and occasionally slightly alarmed pedestrians. The day was January 27, Holocaust Memorial Day, and on each card was an invitation to take part in a

If you were lucky enough to escape the British winter for sunnier climes this Christmas, what went through your mind when you were cruising over the deep blue seas of the earth? Did you wonder what was going on beneath that distant rippled surface? Did you imagine silent jellyfish; shoals of

Theatre 1. King and Country: The Great Cycle of Kings The RSC performs its Richard II, Henry IV (Parts One and Two) and Henry V as a four-play cycle. David Tennant, Antony Sher and Alex Hassell star. A historic occasion. Barbican, London EC2 (020 7638 8891), four cycles running from Jan 12-24

1 Peter Brookes, Jeremy Corbyn. Your country needs you to give Isis a break, 2015 There’s nothing more festive than satire. The Times’s cartoonist Peter Brookes — Press Awards Cartoonist of the Year for the seventh time — merrily bites the hand of the politicians that feed him material, to bring

The Importance of Elsewhere: Philip Larkin’s Photography by Richard Bradford Considering his enthusiasm for it (if that’s the word), it seems extraordinary that Philip Larkin’s photography has not been published before. It was the perfect hobby for this detached, misogynist miserabilist — keeping

These days, everything in the art world comes bearing the “immersive” tag. Theatre, art, dance — no creative endeavour is valid without the viewer being included and asked to “participate” (usually in a dark room with very loud music). In 1942, however, no one had heard the term, until the art

In 1863, alone at her home in Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight, her husband abroad and her children all having left home, Julia Margaret Cameron was feeling uncharacteristically dismal. Then a package arrived, from her daughter, Julia Norman. Inside was a camera, with a short note that read: “It